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THE 

MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

A SUMMARY OF ITS PROGRESS DURING THE LAST SIX 
YEARS AND A SURVEY OF FUTURE POSSIBILITIES 



TOGETHER WITH 

BUDGET ESTIMATES FOR 1921-23 



December, 1920 






T*y Transfer 

APR 18 1921 



PROGRESS OR STAGNATION— WHICH? 

The high lights in tlic progress of the Minnesota Historical 
Society during the last six years may he summarized as fol- 
lows : 

The Society has moved from inadequate quarters in the Cap- 
itol to the' magnificent new Historical Building. 

Its library has increased in size over 30 per cent, mainly as a 
result of gifts. 

Progress has been made in the recataloguing and classification 
of the library along modern lines. 

Its service to readers and students has been trebled. 

A manuscript division has been organized with a curator, and 
the most valuable of its manuscripts have been arranged 
and filed. 

Additional manuscript collections of great value have been 
acquired. 

The Society has been made official custodian of noncurrent 
state and local archives, and extensive and valuable col- 
lections of records and papers from the offices of the 
governor, the secretary of state, and other state depart- 
ments have been taken over, arranged, and made acces- 
sible to students. 

Tlie nuiseum has been organized as a separate division with a 
curator and an assistant. 

The museum objects and pictures have been sorted, classified, 
listed, and arranged in exhibits so far as cases have been 
available. 

Children's history hours and historic tours have been inau- 
gurated. 

A quarterly magazine, the Minnesota History Bulletin, has 
been founded. 



Dr. Fpl well's History of Minnesota has been edited and pre- 
- pared for the press. 

Two volumes of Collections have been published. 

Thousands of people have been interested in state history and 
the work of the Society through lectures, newspaper and 
magazine publicity, and the distribution of publications — 
especially a Handbook of the Society recently issued. 

The active membership has, without any extensive campaign, 
been increased over 40 per cent. 

This progress has been made zvithout any large increase in 
the appropriations to the Society. In fact, the purchasing 
power of those appropriations is considerably less at the end 
of the period than it zvas at the beginning. Only by the adop- 
tion of the following expedients lias it been possible to make 
bot/i ends meet: 

Since 1916 the private income of the Society, consisting of 
receipts from dues and income from investments, has 
been drawn upon for maintenance purposes in ever- 
increasing sums, until now the limit has been reached. 

Expenditures for books have been cut from nearly $5,000 in 
1913 to about $1,500 for the current fiscal year, in spite 
of the higher prices of books. (The great increase in 
the library has resulted from gifts, not from purchases.) 

Inadequate salaries have been paid to members of the staff — 
salaries considerably lower than those received by people 
of similar qualifications in other institutions or occupa- 
tions. 

The most rigid economy has been practiced in every possible 
way. 

This year the binding of books, magazines, and newspaper 
files has been curtailed by postponing as much as possible 
to the better times hoped for. 

The crisis lias innc been reached. If f/ic progress of the last 

4 



six years is not to he lost, the Society must have more funds. 
It is asking the next legislature to increase the annual appro- 
priation from $25,000 to $50,000. If this increase is made: 

The Society will be able to make salary increases partly com- 
mensurate with the increased cost of living. 

The completion and publication of Dr. Folwell's History of 
Minnesota will be pushed forward rapidly and a begin- 
ning will be made in the publication of important source 
material of Minnesota history. 

All current books in the field of the library and some publica- 
tions passed up during the lean years will be acquired. 

The binding will be brought up to date. 

The reading-room service will be improved and the books 
catalogued more promptly. 

Additional exhibit cases for the museum and a stereopticon 
for the auditorium will be acV^ired. 

The position of field agent will be revived, making possible 
state-wide search for historical material and stimulation 
of local historical activities. 

// the appropriation is not increased: 

The Society will be forced to cut its staff still further and to 
get along with untrained and incompetent assistants. 

The completion of Dr. Folwell's History will have to be post- 
poned indefinitely. 

The book purchases will of necessity be restricted to a very 
narrow field. 

The flow of gifts will have to be checked because it will be 
impossible to catalogue and care for them. 

Material awaiting binding will accumulate in large quantities 
as a mortgage on the future. 

Valuable manuscript collections will be permanently lost be- 
cause of the inability of the Society to search for and 
acquire them. 

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In short, the Society will have to face the prospect of giving 
up its claim of being a scientific and educational institu- 
tion and content itself with useless but inexpensive anti- 
quarianism, while the relative position of Minnesota as 
compared with the other states in the matter of signifi- 
cant state historical work will sink lower and lower. 

TJic tabic oil the following page shozvs the expenditures 
of the Society for various purposes, from both the state appro- 
priations and the private funds, since 1914, together with the 
budget estimates for the next biennium, as submitted to the 
Governor on December 1. The Explanation of Increases 
which follozvs the table was submitted along zvith the budget 
estimates. 



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EXPLANATION OF INCREASES 

Services 

An increase of ci])Out $12,000 per year or about 66 per 
cent is requested for services. About $7,000 of this sum is 
desired for increasing the salaries of the .present members of 
the stajff. This would permit an average increase of 40 per 
cent over present salaries or 50 per cent over the salaries paid 
in 1917-18 — obviously less than the increase in the cost of 
living. It should be said that there was practically no in- 
crease in salaries between 1914 and 1917. 

The sum of $4,000 is desired to enable the Society (1) to 
restore two positions which have been dropped during the past 
two years because of shortage of funds; and (2) to provide 
for two new appointments — (a) a second reference assistant 
to help out with the reading-room service, for which the de- 
mands have more than doubled in the last two years, and (b) 
an additional assistant to help out in the catalogue department, 
which, in spite of decreased purchases, is unable to keep up 
with its work because of the large quantities of valuable ma- 
terial received as gifts. 

The remaining $1,000 is desired in order to make possible 
the employment of substitutes during vacations and of extra 
assistants when needed for special tasks and emergencies. 
This item, which was $510.65 in 1919-20, was omitted from 
the budget for the current year because of the shortage. 

Publications 

The Society has in press at the present time volume 1 of a 
four-volume History of Minnesota, by Dr. William W. Fol- 
well, first president of the University. This is a work of very 
great value. Of the first volume, only 1,000 copies are being 
printed now because of lack of funds; but the type will be 
held for one year so that more copies can be printed if suffi- 



cient money is available in the next fiscal year. Volumes 2 
and 3 will be ready for printing in 1921-22 and volume 4, in 
1922-23. 

In addition, it is expected that a volume of Collections, con- 
sisting of important source material for the history of the 
state, not now available in print, will be ready for publication 
in 1922-23. It is by means of publications that the Society 
can best make available the results of its work. In this field 
Minnesota is far behind the eastern states and the neighboring 
states of Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, which publish as a 
rule three or four historical volumes a year. 

The following schedule indicates the proposed distribution 
of sums requested for publications: 

Publications 1921-22 1922-23 

Minnesota History Bulletin 

(quarterly) $1,000.00 $1,000.00 

Folwell's History of Minnesota, I 

(additional 1,000 copies) 1,000.00 

Folwell's History of Minnesota, II 3,000.00 
Folwell's History of Minnesota, III 3,000.00 
Folwell's History of Minnesota, IV 3,000.00 

Volume of Collections 2,750.00 

Biennial Report 250.00 

Total $8,000.00 $7,000.00 

Books 

The expenditure for books, being the most elastic large item 
in the budget, has decreased to less than a third of what it 
was at one time, while the cost of books has greatlv increased. 
The decrease of books purchased has been more than made up 
for, in numbers, by the increase in gifts, but these, valuable as 
they are, cannot take the place of books which can be secured 

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only by purchase and which are essential for a well-rounded 
library. 

Unless considerably more money is available in the future 
for the purchase not merely of new books but also of those 
which would ordinarily have been acquired during the last few 
vears, it will be necessary to restrict very greatly the present 
scope of the library. This would be unfortunate, in view of 
the magnificent collections in various fields of American his- 
tory and closely allied subjects now in the library, but it would 
be better than attempting to cover the larger range in a super- 
ficial manner. 

The appropriations asked for would enable the Society to 
maintain the scope of the library and to fill in some of the 
gaps, in so far as books not purchased when pubHshed are still 
in the market. It represents an increase of only 86 per cent 
over the amount spent for books in 1917-18. 

Binding 

The situation with reference to the binding of books, maga- 
zines, and newspapers is serious. The cost of binding has 
doubled in the last few years and this, coupled with the general 
shortage of funds, has forced the Society to leave the bulk of 
its current magazines and newspapers unbound for the present. 
This greatly increases the work involved in consulting tlie files 
and the danger of damage to them, and they must be bound up 
as soon as possible if their preservation is to be insured. The 
appropriation asked for is estimated to be sufficient to care 
for the current binding of the biennium and also for that 
which has had to be postponed. 

Other Equipment 

Very little equipment has been purchased since the Society 
moved into its new building three' years ago. Typewriters are 

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Avearing out and must be replaced, a new desk is badly needed, 
and a stereopticon would add greatly to the services which the 
Society could render in connection with lectures, meetings, and 
children's history hours. 

Additional filing equipment is essential for the proper care 
of valuable manuscript material, archives, card catalogues, and 
especially the Society's large and valuable collection of maps, 
which is practically unavailable because of lack of equipment. 
The need for additional museum cases is very pressing. 
Many valuable museum objects cannot be exhibited because of 
lack of cases, and people hesitate to present such objects un- 
der the circumstances. The museum is visited by over 25,000 
people a year and the educational possibilities of its exhibits 
are A-ery great. 

General 

The Society believes that its request for a doubling of its 
appropriation at this time is fully justified. As evidence 
thereof attention is called to the following facts: 

Fifteen )-ears ago Minnesota was in the front rank of the 
American states as regards appropriations for historical work. 
The annual grant of $20,000 to the Society was the same as 
that received by the Wisconsin Historical Society and was 
exceeded in few, if any, states. Since 1905, however, the 
Minnesota appropriation has been increased onlv once — to 
$25,000 in 1917 — while other states have forged rapidlv 
ahead, with the result that now not only Wisconsin, but also 
Illinois and Iowa spend about three times as much for his- 
torical work as does Minnesota, and few states of equal rank, 
as regards age and wealth, spend less. 

In the meantime, the purchasing power of the dollar has 
decreased steadily and, during the last few years, rapidlv. AH 
investigators of price changes would agree that the purchas- 
ing power of the present appropriation is not more than half 

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



016 090 069 6 



as great as that of the appi-opriation of IS 
differently, the requested appro])riation of $50,000 a year rep- 
resents a purchasing power little if any greater than that of the 
1905 appropriation of $20,000. 

During this same period, moreover, the demands upon the 
Society by the general public have greatly increased. In 1905 
it was just being installed in a few rooms on the ground floor 
of the New Capitol; today it occupies the magnificent His- 
torical Building completed in 1918, but it finds itself in the 
position of the owner of a fine eitate whose income is inade- 
quate for its maintenance. 

Opportunities for valuable work abound but they cannot be 
seized because of insufficient funds. Efficient reading-room 
service, the building up of the library, the making accessible 
of accumulations of uncatalogued books, the binding of maga- 
zines and newspapers, the proper care of valuable maps, manu- 
script collections, and archives, the continuation and develop- 
ment of the educational work of the museum, and the prompt 
publication of the remainder of Dr. Folwell's History — all 
these depend upon increased appropriations. 



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